Fraternity of Peace

The Senate floor last week looked more like rush hour in the wheat pit than a forum for lawmakers. Deprived of their mahogany desks, the Senators sat uncomfortably in chairs so closely wedged to gether that most speakers addressed their colleagues from the front of the chamber.

Returning to their old home (last occupied by the Senate in 1859) while the regular Senate Chamber undergoes repairs, the Senators seemed to take a quickened interest in their work. All week long they turned out in record attendance, jostling through the hordes of clerks, secretaries and minor factotums that clogged the narrow corridor to the entrance.

On opening day, Texas' Tom Connally, dressed in a rumpled linen suit, took the floor to begin the case for the North Atlantic Treaty. With no galleries to play to --in the old semicircular chamber where the Monroe Doctrine was first pronounced 126 years ago--Tom Connally went right to the point.

Unmistakable Proof. The objective of the treaty, he declared, was to provide "unmistakable proof this time that the free nations will stand together to resist armed attack from any quarter." Being purely defensive, it was no old-fashioned military alliance.

"No person in the United States," he argued, "need fear our laws against burglary unless he is a burglar or is getting ready to commit burglary. By the same token, no state need fear this treaty unless it is planning an aggressive act or has aggressive designs in its heart."

Next day, Michigan's Arthur Vandenberg seconded Connally's words. He, too, would reassure the cautious that the pact was not an automatic commitment to war; it was, he said, "a fraternity of peace. It involves us in no obligation not already implicit in our signature to the United Nations Charter . . .

"We may argue ourselves out of ratifying the pact," Vandenberg warned, "but we cannot thereby argue ourselves out of the jeopardy which the pact seeks to minimize . . . Appeasement is surrender on the installment plan."

Vandenberg sat down to thunderous applause from Democrats and Republicans alike. The last stubborn opponents of the pact seemed to be a mere handful--but a two-thirds majority was necessary for approval.

Great Discomfort. The opposition was represented by three points of view. First there were the hard-shelled isolationists like North Dakota's William Langer. They had a surprising ally in elderly, mustached Ralph Flanders of Vermont, a longtime internationalist. He thought the pact did not go far enough; he wanted to turn it into a rejuvenated U.N., equipped with its own international police force. Senator Flanders was convinced that the Politburo had set out to ruin us economically . . . by a "budgetary ambush," forcing the U.S. into a bankrupting arms race.

This week a more penetrating voice was heard in opposition to the pact. No matter what Vandenberg and Connally said, Ohio's Robert Taft felt that it commits the U.S. to arms assistance as well. And if it does, "I believe it will promote war in the world rather than peace . . . My conclusion has been reached with the greatest discomfort. When so many disagree with that conclusion, I must admit that I may be completely wrong."

The last minute difficulties that the pact had run into were a tip-off that the Administration's $1.45 billion arms for Europe program would get a searching Congressional eye.

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